Connectors for Developers
What a Subscriby connector is, what the core provides, and how a package becomes a connector on the marketplace.
Subscriby runs paid memberships on messaging and community platforms. The core knows nothing about any particular platform: it keeps projects, plans, members, subscriptions, payments and grants, and asks a connector to do everything that touches a platform. Telegram is the first connector; Discord is being built; the rest of the roadmap, and any platform a third party brings, arrive the same way.
A connector is a Composer package built on the connector SDK (subscriby/connector-sdk, version 1.0). It carries a connector.json that says what it is and what it can do, and PHP classes that implement the SDK's ports, the interfaces the core calls. Nothing else is required: the SDK's service provider wires the package into the application, the core renders the connector's install form from the manifest, and the marketplace builds the connector's page from the same file.
What the core does for you
- Installations, identities, spaces and grants live in the core's own tables. A connector never stores who a member is or which subscription grants what; it records them through the Core API (
Subscriby\Connector\Core\*) and reads them back the same way. - Money is the core's. Checkout, settlement, refunds, dunning and the entitlement rules are core; a connector that offers a platform's own payment method implements one contract and lets the core account for it.
- Messages are written once. Every confirmation, reminder, broadcast and support reply is composed by the core in a canonical HTML subset with a closed set of actions; the connector renders it within the limits its manifest declares.
- Health and recovery are one model. The core probes installations and places on a schedule and runs the Disaster Recovery Program; a connector answers probes and performs the platform-side steps it declares it can.
- Every surface is fed at once. The dashboard, the REST API, the MCP server, webhooks, Zapier and n8n all read the same manifest and the same rows, so a connector appears everywhere by existing.
The boundary
The only thing that crosses between the core and a connector, in either direction, is the SDK:
- A connector imports
Subscriby\Connector\*and nothing under the application's namespace. Tests fail a package that does. - The core never imports a connector's namespace. It reaches a connector through the registry and the ports, and it reaches a connector's UI through typed slots the connector fills.
- Data crosses as SDK value objects (
InstallationRef,IdentityRef,SpaceRef,GrantRequest,Message, …), never as Eloquent models.
Installed by Subscriby, not uploaded
There is no runtime plugin upload. A connector is a package Subscriby reviews and installs; whether it is available to creators is then a deployment setting, and a connector can be paused during an incident without a deploy. The marketplace's Community badge marks a connector built by a third party against the SDK and reviewed by Subscriby.
Where to start
Building a connector
The package layout, the service provider, the Connector class and the ports every connector must bind.
The manifest
Every block of connector.json, one page each, with the published JSON Schema.
Ports
One page per port: what the core asks of it, when it is called, and what the kit checks.
Core API
The contracts a connector calls into the core, one page each: installations, identities, spaces, grants, creators, alerts, recovery, payment methods.
Data rules
The tables a connector may create, the ones it may never touch, and how legacy data moves.
Conformance kit
The twenty-three rules every connector passes, one by one, and what review adds.
Testing a connector
The fakes, their assertions, what your own suite covers, and how the kit runs against a package.
Publishing
Versioning, translations, review, the lanes, updating after first publish, pausing and retiring.
Tutorial: a forum connector
From an empty directory to a package that passes the kit, for an imaginary forum with private boards.
Listing and review
The listing block, the marketing words, the badges Subscriby stamps, and the review checklist.
Related
- Connectors Marketplace — what creators see, lane by lane.
GET /connectors— the same catalogue over the REST API.- Telegram — the first connector, as creators use it.
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